Professor Jennifer Saul
MA, PhD Princeton; BA Rochester
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Honorary Professor
Full contact details
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
45 Victoria Street
Sheffield
S3 7QB
- Profile
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Jenny's primary interests are in Philosophy of Language, Feminism, Philosophy of Race, and Philosophy of Psychology. She is currently working on racism in political speech, a topic which has kept her extremely busy recently. (In addition to academic papers (which can be found at her academia.edu page, she has written many articles on this topic for a broader audience.)
- Research interests
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Jenny's most recent book was Lying, Misleading and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics (Oxford University Press 2012). This argues that considering the distinction between lying and misleading-- which seems to many an ethically significant one-- can help to shed new light on methodological disputes in philosophy of language over notions like what is said, semantic content, assertion, impliciture, and expliciture. She also argues that careful attention to the way that communication works can shed new light on the ethical issues. (And she considers some fascinating real-world cases, feeding her lifelong obsession with political scandals but also branching out into such excellent topics as the Jesuit doctrine of Mental Reservation.)
With Helen Beebee, she published a report for the British Philosophical Association and SWIP UK entitled "Women in Philosophy in the UK: A Report". This report presents the first ever study of the gender imbalance in UK philosophy and provides a list of recommendations to combat it. Also with Helen Beebee, she authored guidelines for good practice on gender issues in philosophy-- these can be found at the BPA website, as the BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme.
- Publications
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Books
- Lying, Misleading, and What is Said. OUP Oxford.
- Simple sentences, substitution, and intuitions. Clarendon Press.
- Feminism: Issues and Arguments. Oxford University Press.
Edited books
- Implicit Bias and Philosophy Volume 2. Oxford University Press.
- Implicit Bias and Philosophy Volume 1. Oxford University Press.
Journal articles
- What is happening to our norms against racist speech?. Aristotelean Society Supplementary Volume, 93(1), 1-23. View this article in WRRO
- (How) Should We Tell Implicit Bias Stories?. Disputatio, 10(50), 217-244. View this article in WRRO
- Racial Figleaves, the Shifting Boundaries of the Permissible, and the Rise of Donald Trump. Philosophical Topics, 45(2), 97-116. View this article in WRRO
- Why So Few Women in Value Journals? How Could We Find Out?. Public Affairs Quarterly, 31(2), 125-141. View this article in WRRO
- Are generics especially pernicious?. Inquiry. View this article in WRRO
- Stop Thinking So Much About ‘Sexual Harassment’. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 31(3), 307-321.
- Fewer invited talks by women in evolutionary biology symposia. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 26(9), 2063-2069. View this article in WRRO
- Scepticism and Implicit Bias. Disputatio, 5(37), 243-263.
- Maker’s Knowledge or Perpetuator’s Ignorance?. Jurisprudence.
- Just Go Ahead and Lie. Analysis.
- On Speakers and Audiences, Feminism and the Lying/Misleading Distinction. Intercultural Pragmatics.
- Philosophical Analysis and Social Kinds: Gender and Race. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 80(1), 119-143.
- On Treating Things as People: Objectification, Pornography, and the History of the Vibrator. Hypatia: a journal of feminist philosophy.
- Pornography, Speech Acts and Context. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
- Objectification, pornography, and the history of the vibrator. NOUV QUEST FEM, 24(1), 38-+.
- . Philosophical Studies, 111(1), 1-41.
- Speaker meaning, what is said and what is implicated. NOUS, 36(2), 228-248. View this article in WRRO
- What is said and psychological reality: Grice's project and relevance theorists' criticisms. LINGUIST PHILOS, 25(3), 347-372.
- Sexual harassment: Issues and answers. EUR J PHILOS, 10(1), 139-142.
- Thinking about sexual harassment: A guide for the perplexed. EUR J PHILOS, 10(1), 139-142.
- Intensionality: What are Intensional Transitives?. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. View this article in WRRO
- Implicature: Intention, convention, and principle in the failure of Gricean theory. NOUS, 35(4), 630-641. View this article in WRRO
- Implicature: Intention, convention in the failure of Gricean theory. PHILOS QUART, 50(201), 542-545.
- Did Clinton say something false?. Analysis, 60(267), 255-257.
- Did Clinton say something false? (William Jefferson Clinton, aspect-sensitivity). ANALYSIS, 60(3), 255-257.
- Did Clinton say something false?. Analysis, 60(267), 255-257.
- The road to hell: Intentions and propositional attitude ascription. MIND LANG, 14(3), 356-375.
- Substitution, simple sentences, and sex scandals. ANALYSIS, 59(2), 106-112.
- The Best of Intentions: Ignorance, Idiosyncrasy, and Belief Reporting. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 29(1), 29-47.
- The pragmatics of attitude ascription (Belief reporting, language, thought). PHILOS STUD, 92(3), 363-389.
- Reply to Forbes. Analysis, 57(2), 114-118.
- Substitution and simple sentences - Reply to Forbes. ANALYSIS, 57(2), 114-118.
- Substitution and simple sentences. ANALYSIS, 57(2), 102-108.
- Reply to Forbes. Analysis, 57(2), 114-118.
- Language in the World: A Philosophical Inquiry.. The Philosophical Review, 105(2), 262-262.
- Still an Attitude Problem. Linguistics and Philosophy: a journal of natural language syntax, semantics, logic, pragmatics, and processing.
- Implicit Bias and Reform Efforts in Philosophy: A Defence. Philosophical Topics. View this article in WRRO
- Enlightened? As If!. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 18(4).
- Ranking Exercises in Philosophy and Implicit Bias. Journal of Social Philosophy, 43(3).
Chapters
- Immigration in the Brexit Campaign: Protean Dogwhistles and Political Manipulation In Saunders J & Fox C (Ed.), Media Ethics, Free Speech, and the Requirements of Democracy Routledge View this article in WRRO
- Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation, and Philosophy of Language In Fogal D, Harris DW & Moss M (Ed.), New Work on Speech Acts
- Negligent Falsehood, White Ignorance, and False News In Stokke A & Michaelson E (Ed.), Lying: Language, Knowledge, and Ethics Oxford University Press
- Beyond Just Silencing and Censorship: A Call for Complexity in Discussions of Academic Free Speech In Lackey J (Ed.), Academic Freedom Oxford University Press
- Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Epistemic Injustice In Medina J, Kidd IJ & Polhaus G (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice
- Philosophers Explicitly Associate Philosophy with Maleness In Saul J & Brownstein M (Ed.), Implicit Bias and Philosophy Volume 1 Oxford University PRess
- The heterogeneity of Implicit Bias In Saul J & Brownstein M (Ed.), Philosophy and Implicit Bias: Volume 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, (pp. 80-103). Oxford University Press View this article in WRRO
- Conversational Implicature, Speaker Meaning, and Calculability, Meaning and Analysis: New Essays on H. Paul Grice Palgrave
- The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice Routledge
- Politically Significant Terms and Philosophy of Language: Methodological Issues In Superson A (Ed.), Out of the Shadows: Analytic Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy
Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries
- Feminist Philosophy of Language. In Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
- Lying, Misleading, and What is Said. OUP Oxford.
- Research group
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Jenny has supervised PhD students working on names, indexicals,implicature, gender, sexual objectification, vagueness, indexicals, reference, justice, cosmopolitanism and feminism, epistemic/communicative injustice, semantic minimalism, lying, feminist philosophy of science, the family, philosophy of sex, and autonomy.
- Professional activities and memberships
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Jenny was Director of the (2011-2013) Leverhulme-funded Implicit Bias and Philosophy Project (link at the right). She has published two co-edited volumes on implicit bias with Michael Brownstein. and she continues to lecture widely on this topic to a range of audiences. She is especially interested in helping academic institutions find methods to combat both implicit and explicit biases, and she frequently advises on this topic.
Jenny is Director of the Society for Women in Philosophy UK, Chair of the Analysis Committee, and Co-Chair of the British Philosophical Association's Women in Philosophy Committee. She is on the Editorial Board for Symposia in Gender, Race, and Philosophy, and on the Analysis Committee.
Jenny is honoured to have received the 2011 Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award in Washington, DC; and to have been chosen as Mind Association President for 2019-20. But her proudest accomplishment is nonetheless having been a consultant on a zombie movie script.
Media
- How Donald Trump is making racist language okay again, Independent
- The View from Brexit Britain - America Still Has The Change To Repudiate Hatred, Huffington Post
- Interviewed about moralising of student clothing chouces, Times Higher Education
- Will the Teaching Excellence Framework be sexist?, The Guardian
- Terence Crutcher’s Murder: This is not about implicit bias, Huffington Post
- Implicit bias in the age of Trump, OPU blog
- Donald Trump, Deniability and Figleaves, Philosophers Mag
- Brexit: Resist The Simple ‘Racism’ Narrative, Huffington Post
- Habituation and Hate, Huffington Post
- Donald Trump, Racial Figleaves, and The Breadth of Bigotry, Huffington Post
- I am an immigrant – and I believe “migrant” is a far from neutral term, New Statesman
- Why prioritising women and children in the refugee crisis is a terrible idea, New Statesman
- 'Philosophy is for posh, white boys with trust funds' – why are there so few women?, The Guardian
- Philosophy has a sexual harassment problem, Salon
- The Culture Gabfest “Summer Strut” Edition, Slate
- Male domination of philosophy ‘must end’, Times Higher Education
- Something’s Smoking, Indise Higher Ed